Free Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery Page A

mother to the station. She had kissed grandmother and Aunt Gertrude good-bye dutifully.
    â€œIf you meet your Aunt Irene Fraser down on the Island, remember me to her,” said grandmother. There was an odd little tone of exultation in her voice. Jane felt that grandmother had got the better of Aunt Irene in some way, at some time, and wanted it rubbed in. It was as if she had said, “She will remember me .” And who was Aunt Irene?
    60 Gay seemed to scowl at her as they drove away. She had never liked it and it had never liked her, but she felt drearily as if some gate of life were shut behind her when the door closed. She and mother did not talk as they drove along over the elfish underground city that comes into view under the black street on a rainy night. She was determined she would not cry and she did not. Her eyes were wide with dismay but her voice was cool and quiet as she said good-bye. The last Robin Stuart saw of her was a gallant, indomitable little figure waving to her as Mrs. Stanley herded her into the door of the Pullman.
    They reached Montreal in the morning and left at noon on the Maritime Express. The time was to come when the very name of Maritime Express was to thrill Jane with ecstasy, but now it meant exile. It rained all day. Mrs. Stanley pointed out the mountains but Jane was not having any mountains just then. Mrs. Stanley thought her very stiff and unresponsive and eventually left her alone…for which Jane would have thanked God, fasting, if she had ever heard of the phrase. Mountains! When every turn of the wheels was carrying her further away from mother!
    The next day they went down through New Brunswick, lying in the gray light of a cheerless rain. It was raining when they got to Sackville and transferred to the little branch line that ran down to Cape Tormentine.
    â€œWe take the car ferry there across to the Island,” Mrs. Stanley explained. Mrs. Stanley had given up trying to talk to her. She thought Jane quite the dumbest child she had ever encountered. She had not the slightest inkling that Jane’s silence was her only bulwark against wild, rebellious tears. And Jane would not cry.
    It was not actually raining when they reached the Cape. As they went on board the car ferry the sun was hanging, a flat red ball, in a rift of clouds to the west. But it soon darkened down again. There was a gray choppy strait under a gray sky with dirty rags of clouds around the edges. By the time they got on the train again it was pouring harder than ever. Jane had been seasick on the way across and was now terribly tired. So this was P. E. Island…this rain-drenched land where the trees cringed before the wind and the heavy clouds seemed almost to touch the fields. Jane had no eyes for blossoming orchard or green meadow or soft-bosomed hills with scarfs of dark spruce across their shoulders. They would be in Charlottetown in a couple of hours, so Mrs. Stanley said, and her father was to meet her there. Her father, who didn’t love her, as mother said, and who lived in a hovel, as grandmother said. She knew nothing else about him. She wished she knew something…anything. What did he look like? Would he have pouchy eyes like Uncle David? A thin, sewed-up mouth like Uncle William? Would he wink at the end of every sentence like old Mr. Doran when he came to call on grandmother?
    She was a thousand miles away from mother and felt as if it were a million. Terrible waves of loneliness went over her. The train was pulling into the station.
    â€œHere we are, Victoria,” said Mrs. Stanley in a tone of relief.

CHAPTER 12
    As Jane stepped from the train to the platform a lady pounced on her with a cry of “Is this Jane Victoria…can this be my dear little Jane Victoria?”
    Jane did not like to be pounced on…and just then she was not feeling like anybody’s Jane Victoria.
    She drew herself away and took in the lady with one of her straight, deliberate